Blogging to Sell Your Products

Lesson 5 of 26

Hot Seat: Choose Your Blogging Platform

Blogging to Sell Your Products

Lesson 5 of 26

Hot Seat: Choose Your Blogging Platform

Lesson Info

Hot Seat: Choose Your Blogging Platform

So now we're gonna have a little hot seat and help Michelle choose her platform, so why don't you come on up here. All right, so tell us who you are and what you do, and I know you don't have a site yet, but tell us how we can find you on Instagram, probably?
Yes, my name is Michelle. My brand is Marocky. You can find me on Instagram at MarockySF. And I make hand leather wallets and goods using French techniques.
Awesome. So you are literally just starting and have not launched yet.
Yes.
And have pretty much nothing.
Yes.
So tell me your thoughts. What are you thinking? Or are you really like, I have no idea?
I mean, I hear about Shopify all the time.
I wonder from who.
It's definitely probably one of my top choices.
And so, in your case, what's your hesitation in starting and making a choice? Is it just that you feel like you're not ready yet, or--
Yeah, I mean, I don't have like my photography down yet. Like a big collection. Just hesitating, in general, 'cause ...

it's scary.
All right, so what I'm gonna say is right now, I think we're gonna fix that. I think ultimately, if you're kinda hearing about Shopify and you were leaning toward Shopify, it's a good place to start. I think it's also-- one of the things I will say about Squarespace is you feel like your images aren't quite ready yet, Squarespace is tricky because it's really image heavy. I know you were saying, "My apartment's dark, and I only--" we were talking about this before the class. "My apartment's dark and I kind of have an old iPhone, and that's it right now, so I'm still working on that." So to set up a Squarespace site and sort of start blogging on that, I think you're gonna just feel frustrated. Like, "Oh, here's my image that I don't love, blown up really big." 'Cause that's a lot of what you see on Squarespace. So not to say that you're not gonna make your images better and all of those things, but I think you might be happier starting on Shopify anyway, where it's like-- You can give yourself a little more white space. You can kinda cheat the images a little bit. So, I think in your case, the products you're gonna sell, and probably also-- What price point are you looking at?
Probably a mid-, high-range.
So, I think the more stuff you're trying to sell, the more-- Shopify has just so much more happening on the back end. So what I'm going to suggest to you is even though you're not ready with your products yet, bite the bullet, get the Shopify store, and start blogging. Because you can actually then tell people this is coming soon, give them those sneak peaks. And right now, you don't have a space-- right, where you're sending them for email capture?
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
So this gives you a site where you can say, "Hey, go to the blog, see the sneak peaks, see behind the scenes." And kind of work on it from there. One of the ways you could actually think about it yet without products is, think about if you're on Kickstarter and all the updates that people give on the project as it's developing. You could treat the blog like that until you're ready to launch. Like, I'm updating you, I'm keeping you-- letting you know that things are coming soon. And then as soon as you're ready to start publishing products, you're ready for that, too. Sound good?
Yeah.
Feel okay?
Yes, good.
You're gonna do it now?
I'll do it.
You'll stop thinking about it, awesome. Thank you. See, it really does not have to be that complicated. It's not like we went through a 20-step process. It was like, cool, Shopify sounds good. I'm gonna get started.

Class Description

Blogging is one of the most valuable, essential tools you can use to engage with customers and, ultimately, leverage to grow your business and make more sales. An entertaining and informative blog should be an integral component of your online content marketing strategy. If you are not blogging, it’s time to get started!

In Blogging to Sell Your Products, Megan Auman will walk you through her process of crafting blog content that will inspire product purchases.

You will learn to do the following:

Set up your blog using the right platform

Craft a blog post in less than an hour

Promote your blog and create posts that encourage sharing

Boost your Google page rankings using SEO blogging techniques

Choose a product-based blogging approach

In today's saturated craft marketplace it’s getting harder and harder to make sales. And, it’s also becoming difficult to get accepted into craft shows. In Blogging to Sell Your Products, you will learn to use your blog to set yourself apart from the crowd.

Trang Le

I don't agree with Megan's assessment that writing a how-to process will only attract your peers and competitors, not your ideal customers. I know a lot of graphic designers who post design tutorials frequently and it only helps raising their profiles.
Writing a how-to post doesn't have to be like shooting in your foot because:
* You don't have to share everything. There's more to great designs than knowing how to draw a certain thing. Composition, color, typography etc all come into play.
* Even if you're given a step by step tutorial, it's very likely that you will stumble into a lot of issues or it takes you too much effort and time to complete it and it's better to hire a professional designer. Web building tutorials are everywhere, but web developers and designers still have their places. There's a big difference between knowing and understanding.
* Even if you're professional designer, sometimes it's better to buy from your colleague than to make it on your own because no designer is excellent at every aspect of design and for a designer, time is as much valuable as money. For example, web designer may need to purchase custom typefaces from a font designers, and reading a blog which indicates that the writer knew his stuff will inform the web designer to make a rightful decision.
Other than that, the course is rich information packed with a lot of actionable strategies and real fact about the blogging landscape.

Varvara Lyalyagina

I went straight to Polyvore and created a blog post. Not as fast as Megan was talking but who cares the blog post created and this is the best result of the training. http://hometocome.com/2017/05/plany-na-leto-2017.html
Feeling super motivated. Megan makes it sound easy to complete and absolutely not overwhelming. This training is like a fresh air. Thank you!

Gina

Megan is absolutely amazing! I have taken several of her classes and each one is fantastic! So full of information that you can implement right away. I just started blogging and now I am so motivated and actually look forward to doing it. Thanks Megan! You rock! :)